Gather Data Through All Your Senses

One of the Habits of the Mind focuses on gather data through all of your senses—vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell.  These are your natural pathways and by intentionally paying attention to the world around you through your senses you will experience the world more fully.

Sir Ken Robinson declares that we “are living in the most aesthetic time” in history and that we must fully participate in the world by taking it in through every sense.  To do that our learning opportunities for youth must be active—hands-on and minds-on.  We must work together so if we miss something our partners can bring it to our attention.  As we work to experience the world fully we will find it meaningful, build our skill set, and of course broaden our horizons.

Gathering data through all our sense is foundational for moving the study of STEM forward.  It is fundamental to the engineering process when we ask ourselves what is going on here?  What’s working well?  What are the problems?  What are the constraints?  Without using all of our senses we will not have an accurate picture.  We must perceive the world and attach those new perceptions to what we already know and then respond in wonderment and awe about what we now perceive. 

Taking the time to help youth intentionally gather information through all of their sense will pay big dividends.  We live in such an auditory and visual landscape that it is easy to overlook the other three essential senses—which often only come into play when we don’t like something, rather that realizing learning is a multi-sensory activity.

Learn more about how C4K has put this Habit of Mind to work in our Sci-gineering curriculum.  Check out this link for more information.